


Don't Expect Payment

by ohjustdisarmalready



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Culture & Worldbuilding, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Infernal as a language made for a literal other world, Languages and Linguistics, Team as Family, Tieflings, Trust, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-06-22 01:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15570411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohjustdisarmalready/pseuds/ohjustdisarmalready
Summary: A series of explorations of tiefling culture and Infernal as a language, and what they mean for Molly and Jester as they grow closer to each other and the rest of the team.





	1. Sister/Brother

**Author's Note:**

> This is a three-part series of oneshots in the same universe but mostly unrelated. Just some good old fashioned siblings and some fun with language
> 
> This work is dedicated to everyone who's gonna call me a furry for liking tieflings. Fuck you in particular.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly tries to teach Jester and Nott how to cheat at tarot.

They are in a bar, laughing and drinking and fighting the night away. Caleb has long given up on truly concentrating on his spellbook, mostly keeping it open because to close it would be to admit defeat. Molly is trying to convince Beau to let him tell her fortune while teaching Nott shuffling tricks, and Jester is next to him, looking on. She can’t quite see the moment the card comes out of the sleeve no matter how closely she watches, and Molly slows down to demonstrate.

“It’s not about being subtle,” he explains. “Subtle people are sneaky and sneaky people get caught. It’s about making something else more important than your hands.”

A card flips out of the deck mid-shuffle and when Jester glances at it, Molly turns up the top card of the deck. It’s the man in a cloak that he said he’d pull out, upside-down.

“Ooh! You did it! What’s it mean?” Jester asks, tail flicking curiously. “We are all going to sleep upside down like bats?”

“I was trying to show you—ah, never mind. The magician, reversed. Illusions, trickery, sleight of hand. In this case, the two of you learning card tricks, hopefully. Maybe I should have gone for justice,” he muses. Jester points to the card he’d slipped out as a distraction.

“What about that one? With the lady?” This one is upside down, too—it actually landed neatly in front of Molly, perfectly in line for a reading. Molly shrugs.

“Ah, that one always comes out like that. Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Now, you think you can give it a try? Either of you? You don’t have sleeves to hide in, but getting it out of the deck and back in is a good place to start. Better if I can see what you’re doing, anyway.”

Nott reaches for the cards and gives them a good shuffle or two. “Which one am I trying to pull?”

Molly leans back into Jester, who leans in to see. “How about strength, upright? See if you can get it to face you.”

“Do I have to do the thing where I drop one?” she asks. “There are a lot of sticky spots on the table and I don’t want you to stab me for getting your cards in them.”

Caleb does glance up at that, briefing over the three of them to make sure they aren’t actually going to stab Nott, and Jester waves.

Caleb doesn’t quite wave back, but his hand moves a little bit. He was totally going to.

“These cards have been through a lot more than some bad beer,” Molly says. “Tell you what, though, I bet you can think of your own way. You don’t even have to distract us, as long as you can convince us to look somewhere other than the cards. Give it a whirl!”

Jester feels the slight vibration in her chair as Molly’s happily waving tail hits one of the legs. She’s barely paying attention as her own curls through the air, too busy watching Nott look at the cards and turn one up.

“Wrong way,” Nott says, showing the strength card upside up. “What was the thing you did to make sure the direction was right?”

“Right, so it’s like this,” Molly says, taking the cards and starting an easy shuffle. “You see how the backs look the same upside up as upside down? Well, that’s—”

His tail hits her chair again and without really thinking about it, she twines hers with it—halfway a quick embrace and halfway a neat guide to keep it from getting tangled with her feet when she prepares to get up and get another drink.

Mollymauk freezes, and cards explode across the table as he fumbles the shuffle.

Caleb looks up, and even Fjord and Yasha and Beau stop their conversation when a couple cards make it across the table.

“I—I—I mean um, that’s uh, that’s—I was—” Molly’s tail curls tighter around hers, hooking the tips together, or she’d think he was upset.

Let’s take a step back.

Tieflings, as a race, were created by humans, from humans. Specifically, created by foolish or arrogant or evil or fallible mages dabbling in things they didn’t—or did—understand, and cursing their bloodlines for generations to face violence and fear from the ‘standard’ races, especially humans, with an instinctive understanding that they are facing the evils that already live inside of them made visible.

Jester sometimes thinks, in her very worst moments that she likes to pretend don’t happen, that tieflings have all their evils facing outwards so they can be good inside, and that humans have all their good facing outwards so that…

But Caleb and Beau are very good people, and kind, and there are other humans that are very good people, and kind, and Jester doesn’t think that way often. She hasn’t asked Mollymauk if he ever does.

Regardless. Tieflings have all the mistakes of their distant ancestors available for anyone to target. Some paint their skin to be of a more palatable tone, some wear heavy hoods over their horns or cut them off entirely (the Hornless are to be pitied), some wear illusions or glass contraptions to make their eyes white and black and green in concentric circles and not fiendish at all, and nearly all have learned to still their tails in public. Jester has seen people who wrap their tails tight around one leg all day and only let them free in the privacy of their own homes, with doors shut tight.

No one is going to mistake a tiefling for not a tiefling. But to be _less_ tiefling is to be safe. So anything that hides even a single trait is custom, for many.

Not for Jester. Not for Molly. But for many.

And according to this custom, a tail doesn’t touch another person. No reminders, as if anyone will forget. A tiefling’s tail will naturally wave or lash or curl, but to draw attention to it is to threaten its owner, or to express great trust.

Accordingly, what Jester has just said is _brother_.

And Mollymauk, recovering, squeezes her elbow and plants a kiss on her forehead and flicks the tip of her tail with his. _Sister_.

“Uh,” says Nott, “did someone shoot you for a second there? Jester?”

The rest of the party keeps a wary eye out, but Molly laughs and starts collecting cards, flipping one as he goes.

“What did I tell you? It’s all about misdirection. See? I’ve got your card,” he says, flicking over the strength card and gesturing grandly. “Made you look, didn’t I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, that fucker


	2. Battlebond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jester is quiet, and Molly needs to _fix it_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! I'm probably gonna split part 3 into two chapters for length. There's also a part 4 but it's like super short.

Molly doesn’t…actually know a lot about tieflings.

He is one! Obviously. So things just sort of come to him when he needs them, and they lurk around with language and swordplay and all the other things he’s never had to relearn. But, intellectually. If he had to tell someone point-blank everything there is to know about tieflings, he’d come up pretty short.

He’s only actually met two of them, and he doesn’t think Jester is anyone’s idea of standard. And Charity, the carnival’s fortune teller before him, he’d only known for a few months before…

Well. Never let it be said that the Empire is too modern for a good old-fashioned murder. Especially where tiefling carnies are concerned.

Mollymauk is understandably wary of small towns.

But intellectually, if he’s not already looking at Jester and knowing what she means and how he wants to respond, he couldn’t say why he taps her ankles with his tail or lets his claws grow out a little more when he starts traveling with her. It just feels right, like safety and like family. He’s not shy with self-expression, but he didn’t know any different until he was with someone who _gets it_ and all of a sudden he’s letting down walls he didn’t know he had.

It’s not just Jester, either. Now that he knows how relaxing it is, he’s learned to flick Nott’s hair with his tail or tap a claw on the table to get Caleb’s attention without touching him or duck his head into Fjord’s view to demand his attention eye-to-red-eye.

And now, Jester is quiet and she missed a couple times with her lollipop and Caleb went down and now Nott isn’t talking to any of them because she’s fussing over him, and that’s fine, the two of them are close and Molly respects that they need time to chill post-combat, make sure they’re each alive, but Jester is right here blaming herself and it wasn’t her fault and Molly has a soul-deep _need_ to fix it.

He sits down with her at the bar.

“Two more of whatever she’s having,” he tells the bartender.

“What I am having is terrible,” Jester says.

“Two of something better than what she’s having,” he says. She tries for a smile, fails.

“I don’t think I am very good company right now,” she tells him. He shrugs.

“Maybe I’m looking for bad company,” he offers.

“But then you would be looking for Beau or C-Caleb.” Her shoulders hitch and she hunches in a little further. Honestly, she should leave the pretending she’s fine to the professionals.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he says, because he has to start somewhere.

“Yes, it was.”

Fuck.

“No, it wasn’t,” he says. Repetition has never worked before, but why not try again?

“I did not kill the wolf before it killed Caleb. And then I didn’t heal him quick enough. And now he and Nott are mad at me, and Fjord is probably mad at me, and Beau left, and Yasha is gone, and you wanted to go out drinking and I am ruining your night, and it _is_ my fault!” The new drinks arrive and Jester downs the last of whatever she had before, wincing. It smells terrible, whatever it is. Looks like it doesn’t taste much better.

“Some of whatever you’ve got for food, too. Something sweet if you’ve got it,” Molly tells the bartender, handing over two gold and gesturing for the woman to leave before she can count out change. Luckily, she’s easily persuaded to leave a couple of huddled tieflings alone.

“You got him back up,” Molly says. “That counts for something, right?”

Apparently not, though, because Jester says, “No! Beau got him up! I was out of spells! I am our cleric and I can’t even do that!”

To be fair, Molly himself had been bleeding profusely at the time, and also about a hundred feet away, so he’d missed a bit in the commotion.

“At least you got the thing that did it?” he tries. Jester hunches in further.

“That was Nott,” she says. “I didn’t even hit anything. I am a terrible cleric.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“You’re not a terrible cleric.”

Jester buries her head in her arms. “Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re—hey, hey,” he says, ducking to get next to her. “No, you’re not.”

He hasn’t done it before, but suddenly he needs to click their horns together. He does, decisively. _Sister_ , it means, slantwise.

When Jester had curled their tails, that meant siblinghood in the softest possible sense. It was family in the sense of a safe place, together, a moment to let your guard down. It was a private sort of _you are my brother, you are my family, you are loved. We feel love_. Not a sentiment to be shouted from the rooftops.

This quiet click means _sister-in-arms_. It adds a silent _who-fights-with-me_ to the end of Jester’s name, forever. In some ways, it stakes Molly’s reputation on Jester being good in battle, or at least aligns him with her whether she’s losing or not. It’s a blend of infernal and tiefling, with connotations for either.

She whips her head around to face him, and he has to lean back to avoid a much more jarring collision. The beginnings of tear tracks are already on her face, but she’s not crying right now.

“Really?” Her voice cracks.

He leans in for a quick hug and taps their horns together again in answer.

“There’s no one I’d rather have by my side,” he says. Except Yasha, who has no horns to speak of, but now’s not the time for that. “Really.”

Her tail hooks on his and she damn near crushes him when she hugs back. He lets out a strangled wheeze.

“Ohhh I’m so happy! I’m so happy!” She spins him around. “Oh I can’t wait to tell the Traveler! This is a good day, Molly, I have changed my mind and today is a good day!”

“Glad to help,” he whispers with the breath not immediately crushed out of him. “Breathing,” he tries to warn her.

“No, there is no time for breathing! I need to get out my sketchbook!” She lets him down and he clutches the bar for support. His chest tries to remember how to expand again, with some effort and a slight whistling sound.

“’sgreat,” he croaks. “I’m taking your drink.”

“That’s okay! I wasn’t thirsty anyway,” he hears as he slams it back. He’s earned it.

The sketch of him clutching his chest, kneeling on the floor of the bar with little stars and spirals around his head is in no way accurate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's completely accurate.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Comments so far have motivated me to write more in this fandom even though I should definitely be wrapping up previous projects first. Tieflings, though...worldbuilding...


	3. Hollowed Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly gets some funny looks. Caleb tries to solve the puzzle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to human trafficking and nonconsensual body modification via torture. Most of it is verbal references, but be careful!
> 
> Unrelated: finally we're about to justify the Caleb tag

Caleb is rapidly learning that he knows _fuck-all_ about tieflings.

He’d thought he was fine before, but with all the horn-clicking and tail-related shenanigans, he is thinking he must be missing something. It’s like there’s a body language Mollymauk and Jester use for the rest of them, and then one that’s just tiefling-to-tiefling.

He’s tried to look for a book about it, but most of them are for kinky things and reading them really just makes him uncomfortable. He’s pretty sure Jester isn’t indicating her desire to have deeply dangerous if not anatomically impossible sex with Mollymauk when she uses her tail to swat his hand out of her food, and he can be entirely certain Mollymauk isn’t expressing a hidden wish to dance in her entrails when he gently headbutts her on his way past. And, well, it isn’t his business and he doesn’t really care about what they’re saying as long as it doesn’t pertain to him or Nott, but Caleb Widogast is not a man accustomed to missing things.

Especially things that are apparently painfully obvious.

They’ve encountered a tiefling-heavy district—unusual, but not unheard of, more of a slum than anything—but while people of all manner of bright color and shaped horns walk by, with the intermittent half-orc, drow, kenku, or tabaxi, and even some skittering shapes that do not appear to be any of those things; nearly all of them stop to stare at the party.

No, not at the party. At Mollymauk.

Humans, Caleb can understand. Mollymauk is very loud and very different. Likewise, elves, dwarves, and gnomes have all been startled by the party’s various _unique_ members. Even he and Beau attract dirty looks in some neighborhoods. But here, in this slum full of ‘monster’ races, why does Mollymauk not fit in?

His color is unusual for a tiefling, Caleb is pretty sure, but so is Jester’s, and she wasn’t attracting looks until she moved decisively between Mollymauk and the street. He’d swatted her knee with the flat of his tail and muttered something in Infernal, but she’d hissed back and he’d given up. Caleb isn’t certain if it was a hiss that meant something in Infernal or just a hiss.

He’s considering a spell to let him understand what’s being whispered as they walk through, though. A little tiefling boy is louder than most and Mollymauk holds his head up high and adopts a more graceful, sashaying walk, refusing to let go of his neutral smile.

The little boy’s companion—brother?—shouts something in Infernal, and Jester bristles while Mollymauk calls back, light and lilting as Infernal gets. Both boys’ eyes widen and they scurry back into their home.

“There gonna be an issue?” Fjord asks in an undertone. Beau’s staff smacks against her palm as she flips it back and forth, and Jester’s tail tangles at Mollymauk’s ankles.

“No problem,” Molly sings, “they’re just stunned by my beauty, I think. Or maybe they’re wondering if they can eat Frumpkin!”

His scars, maybe? He certainly makes no effort to hide them, but a great deal more residents of this area have disfiguring scars than in most places they visit. What on earth could it be?

Caleb does vanish Frumpkin for the time being, though. Just in case. Molly smirks.

A little kenku stumbles onto the street in front of them; pushed, it seems, from a nearby alleyway. The child scrambles backwards, staring.

Mollymauk saunters closer and the little one remains frozen as he crouches in front of them. Caleb catches a glint of metal as he slips some coin into their pocket first thing, because Molly is a bleeding heart.

“Something you needed?” Molly asks casually.

The little kenku shuffles, shifts.

“I don’t bite,” Molly promises. “Well, certainly not someone your age.”

“Don’t bite,” repeats the kenku, and in a different voice, “Something wrong with him? Think he did it to himself? Maybe they _chained_ him!”

This one is another young voice, with the morbid fascination of a child encountering violence to strangers, or practicing fire cantrips on ants. Caleb hates those kinds of people, now.

Molly seems to immediately know what they’re talking about, because he sits back on his heels and adopts a storytelling demeanor. Whatever he’s about to say is a load of shit.

“’fraid it’s nothing so exciting,” Molly says, though his tail lashes once and curls in close to him, “see, I got like this when I was hunting a lich! It was a dark night, and stormy, too. And I had just set up my camp…”

The child leans in, and there’s a rustle as more small figures hide in nearby alleyways and homes—some larger figures, too. Mollymauk preens, perfectly at home with an audience, while Jester fumes next to Fjord.

Caleb taps her horn in an imitation of what Mollymauk does when she’s feeling helpless, and she glances over to him, startled. It must have been the right thing to do, though, because she nods firmly and clasps her holy symbol.

“And it went on for days. The worst thing you’d ever felt, but C—but my partner was cleverer than me, see, and she’d had a plan!” Two more children steal out from the alleyway and sit with the kenku, and Beau leans against a building, outwardly bored but with a hand constantly on her staff.

Caleb isn’t sure a group of children warrant that kind of force, but he keeps an eye on the adults he sees through mostly-shuttered windows and partially closed doors and fingers his diamond, just in case. Nott keeps close to his side.

Mollymauk reaches the climax of action and springs to his feet, drawing frost around his bare hand with a flourish. Caleb can’t see the wound, but the glimmer remains as Mollymauk mimes an attack with an imaginary weapon.

“And Sammaster let out a horrible scream, but it was too late! My partner had destroyed his altar and the whole cult was lost as I smashed his phylactery—it had been the very drill he had used! So you see, you and I each owe our safety to these, as there is one less undead cult in the world!” Mollymauk lets the frost over his arm fade as the children clamor and tussle amongst themselves.

“Another! Tell another!” says one young boy—the same one who had shouted earlier, it seems. Molly laughs and shakes his head.

“I am always happy to please a fan, but it seems you are being missed,” and he hisses something that sounds threatening to Caleb, but the child brightens and hugs him around the waist.

“Thank you, mister! Sorry about your horns!” he says, and grabs his companions, dashing off. Caleb can hear as they leave the debate over who will play the lich and who will be the hunter and his partner.

Horns, though? Could all this be about his horns? They look like normal tiefling horns to Caleb—glittering and decorated as any other part of Molly. Maybe the shape, or the coloring?

“Nice story,” Fjord says as Molly hops to his feet. “Any of it true?”

“Not a word,” Molly says, sauntering onward. Caleb notes that his tail is still very still and his shoulders tense, though he puts on a good show of being unaffected.

“They are being very rude,” Jester huffs, and something in Infernal. Caleb is getting very tired of missing half of this conversation.

“Ah, kids are kids,” says Mollymauk. “Rude is what they are. Isn’t this our stop?”

He indicates a house apparently at random, but on closer inspection it might be a storefront. There’s a sign out front in—how very unexpected—Infernal. Isn’t any of this going to be in Undercommon, so they can at least all be confused?

Caleb does cast _comprehend languages_ on himself at this point, because this is getting ridiculous. He is lucky he thought to prepare it this morning.

The sign says _Faith’s Fragrances_ in Infernal script. Caleb reminds himself that Mollymauk and Jester are constantly surrounded by humans doing human things that they are equally ill-equipped to understand and summons his cat again to sit with Nott. He is not going to be frustrated just because he doesn’t know as much as he thought he did about two of his companions’ culture. Or language. Or apparent disfigurement that is obvious to everyone but him.

What the hell could be wrong with Mollymauk’s horns? The curl is maybe a little unusual, but Caleb hadn’t thought there was any difference in status for different shapes…is it related to his infernal ancestor? Maybe?

Jester beats Mollymauk to the door of the shop and strolls in. “We’re here for your ille—”

“We’re here to browse for some things,” Caleb interrupts before she can get them kicked out. “I have some need for incenses? And I had been interested in some more…exotic things.”

The storekeep looks up from the ledger she was writing on. “I have— _by the nine hells_.”

She is looking, of course, directly at Mollymauk.

“ _Hello to you too, gorgeous_ ,” he says in Infernal. “ _Like what you see_?”

The storekeep—Faith, probably—nods and smiles.

“Of course I’d be happy to assist you,” she assures Caleb, and keeping her even tone and polite smile, she hisses, “ _Did these people do this to you?_ _Are you hurt?_ ”

“ _Nothing to worry about, dear, I was born like this_ ,” Mollymauk assures.

“ _There is nothing wrong with him! Don’t be mean to my_ —!” Jester insists. The last word is…blurred, for a moment. Not a sound but a concept—clashing steel and an inhuman battle cry, a crackling fire, staying up until morning. _Bloodbond_ eventually filters into Caleb’s mind, and _brother_.

The spell is…imperfect, with regards to cultural differences. Perhaps there simply isn’t a word for it in Common.

Faith keeps smiling. She brushes by Mollymauk and whispers, “ _I understand_. _I can help you. If you need to escape, ask for diamond dust._ ”

Diamond dust, of course, being one thing they need to buy. Fantastic.

Perhaps they’ll look less suspicious if they ask for that before Mollymauk says anything that could be interpreted as a coded message.

“We are searching for diamond dust,” Caleb says. “Do you have any?”

Molly and Jester wince in unison as Faith pins him with an intense look. Nott materializes from where she was almost certainly looking for something to steal to glare back.

“ _One-who-has-created-us_ ,” she says politely, “ _Monster_. _Dangerous human_.”

And another word that has no translation, but carries with it fury built of pain and betrayal, an accusation of hypocrisy, a thousand silenced screams given voice. _Culler_ , he hears, once the spell has filtered it into something he can understand.

This one he cannot keep a straight face for. He can’t help it. He flinches.

Immediately, Nott demands, “What did you say to him! Jester, what is she saying!”

And Jester says, “Caleb _is our –! I won’t let you say that! Take it back_!”

And Caleb hears _one-who-is-harmed_ , _man-turned-tool_ , _will-rise-again_ , _one-who-is-injured-but-will-not-be-put-down_. A protectiveness, like a wolf with a lame leg—a vulnerability or a vicious fighter, but either way one that is part of the pack and under its care. A survivor for now, a formidable ally later.

Mollymauk puts his hands up and steps between Faith and Caleb, keeping a low hiss going.

“ _I am_ —,” he says—and Caleb hears no equivalent words, but gets the illusion of an electric wrongness that goes beyond pain and freezes the bones, like something scraping against the inside of his skull, paralyzing and awful and permanent, “ _but I have been for a long time. This man is not at fault. Those who are responsible are vengeance-is-served. I do not expect payment from him_.”

Infernal is too damned _different_ to come across right. If this is ever going to happen again, Caleb needs to start learning the language properly.

Jester nods along like this is making sense, and adds, “ _I will die battling by his side, too! He’s okay, he really is. We don’t want to fight. We’re just here to buy some things_.”

Faith takes a step back and relaxes her stance somewhat, and Beau’s breath is barely audible but much closer than it was before while Fjord has his hands out and ready.

“ _If he had done this to me, wouldn’t I still be_ –?” that awful feeling from before, but subtly different, restrained, caged, trapped. “ _Instead, I’ve got all these glitteries in ‘em. Aren’t they nice_?”

Mollymauk tilts his head and the decorations on his horns chime against each other. Is that what this is about?

Caleb has never seen another tiefling with piercings on their horns before…but he’s never seen a tiefling quite like Mollymauk Tealeaf, either. He’d assumed it was an individual choice.

If that awful feeling is what tiefling piercings are like, he thinks he can understand the reactions they’ve been getting. Mollymauk has a lot of them.

“ _Look, see_ ,” Molly says.

Molly does take a careful step back, without taking his eyes off Faith, and carefully nudges Nott to Caleb’s other side with his tail.

“ _Play along, bend down a bit, and tilt your head towards me subtly_ ,” he murmurs in—where the fuck did he learn Sylvan? Caleb refuses to believe he just so happens to know those three phrases.

Caleb does hunch forward a little, though, and braces himself for whatever Molly is trying to pull—but he just nudges Caleb’s forehead with one of his horns, jingling a little as he does so. He’s unexpectedly tense for such a simple action.

Faith’s eyes follow his tail guiding Nott aside and his gentle headbutt to Caleb and she nods.

“ _This is true_? _And the rest of them, they are your allies, too_?” she asks, relaxing her stance but giving each of them in turn a hard look.

“ _To a one_ ,” Molly agrees.

“ _Me, too_!” says Jester, regaining her usual zeal and hugging Beau around the arm. Beau nearly clocks her, only to be dodged and headbutted, too. Faith smiles faintly, perhaps a touch embarrassed, but unapologetic.

“I see. Ladies, gentlemen, it seems I’ve misjudged you. One can never be too cautious, with circumstances like these,” she says in Common. Caleb nods evenly, having understood about 60% of that conversation.

“What exactly would these circumstances be?” asks Fjord, who presumably understood none of it.

Faith shuffles. “You have…ah, two young, scarred-up tieflings with a group of rough-looking strangers, one makes certain assumptions. I’d—”

“We’ll talk later. It’s fine for now,” Molly assures them, breaking in smoothly. “Faith is gonna get us that incense and everything else and we’ll head back to the inn, first. Less open.”

He stands close to Jester, who clicks horns with him and hooks her tail around his ankle briefly before beginning to switch things behind Faith’s back. Caleb makes a note when she changes Frumpkin’s preferred incense with a cheaper variety—maybe he’ll be getting a bargain, if he plays his cards right. And Nott can go for the five-finger discount, if there’s anything they really can’t afford.

“Probably best that way. In the meantime—diamond dust is on the house, with my apologies. What else will you be needing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Faith has a whole backstory and all but no one asked so they didn't get into it. Part 2 of this bit will be up tomorrow! Please let me know how you liked it!


	4. Cornered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mighty Nein chat a bit. It's fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol warning for some dissociation and the approach of a panic attack,,, jokes about death

“So, actually, what the fuck was with that chick?” asks Beau, the heart of grace and subtlety, as soon as they set foot in the inn.

Molly, who has had just about enough of people staring at his horns for the day, motions to the innkeep. He needs alcohol for this.

“Whole bottle—two of them, actually. Whatever you’ve got for the most _awkward_ conversation,” he says. The innkeep, who is of _course_ a tiefling, takes one look at him and hands him two bottles, listing a price he knows doesn’t cover both. He gives the guy four times the gold he’d asked for out of spite. Molly doesn’t need anyone’s pity.

Normally he’d feel some sense of kinship or pride that this guy’s overcome prejudice and runs a successful business or whatever, but Molly is inches away from running away to join the nearest circus where they don’t ask questions about the scars taking up more of your body than the skin does.

Actually, he’s not even inches away. The only thing between him and running away from this entire conversation is that he actually likes these assholes, and apparently that comes with intermittent honest talk about things that aren’t interesting or entertaining in the slightest. And he feels _weird_ after that story he told earlier about—what was it about again?

Probably doesn’t matter. He taps a horn with Jester’s as he comes back to the group; a brief reassurance that they will face this and all future battles together.

Caleb watches a little too keenly for comfort. These things are supposed to be safely under the radar of standard races with better things to worry about than tieflings running into each other to express trust.

Oh, does he ever not want to have this conversation. It’s going to be painfully awkward and everyone is gonna look at him funny and he hates it already.

“So,” he says.

“So,” Fjord says.

_Yep. Good talk. Great time, friends, see you next week when I have to leave the pit I am digging myself into for food._

Maybe he can starve and get buried alive in this metaphorical pit. It would give his life perfect symmetry.

Okay, dark thoughts, dark thoughts. Cool. Cool. Time to face the music.

So he tells himself as he continues to make eye contact with Fjord—who probably can’t tell they’re having a staring contest anyway—and avoid the massive guilt that honest face has him feeling. Fjord isn’t actually any less of an asshole than the rest of them, he reminds himself. He’s just better at hiding it.

“We should probably do this upstairs so that we are not loudly shouting secrets into a busy bar on a Friday night,” Jester says.

“ _I would die a thousand screaming deaths for you_ ,” Molly says. Which carries the meaning of _Thanks bunches_ , but everything sounds much more dramatic in Infernal and also he wants to know if Caleb is still doing whatever lets him understand them.

Either he’s unsurprised by this pledge of loyalty or he doesn’t understand what they’re saying. Hard to say, with Caleb.

Molly turns his back, still holding his alcohol, and strolls to his and Fjord’s room, and then, thinking, to Jester’s and Beau’s. He doesn’t want to associate someplace he’s going to have to sleep tonight with this awkward team talk.

Something in the back of his mind slots into place and relaxes, so apparently they’ve acquired Yasha on the way to the room. He sprawls on Jester’s bed and sure enough, there she is, making her way into the room to stand awkwardly at the foot. He scoots down to join her.

“Was I about to get myself into trouble?” he asks, and she smirks down at him.

“You were going to try to run away by jumping out the window,” she says. He frowns briefly.

“Now, I don’t think that’s really fair. Would I do that?” He smiles winningly at her, upside down from this angle, and she just gives him a Yasha look.

“It would have been pretty pathetic,” she says. She is standing conveniently in front of the window, now that he thinks of it. He is hurt at this completely unwarranted lack of trust.

Jester makes herself comfortable on the bed, too, and Molly shifts so that she’s not crushing him completely. Actually, the more people shuffle into the room, the more vulnerable he feels lying down like this, but to move now would be to let them know that, so he remains. Jester is blocking most of his vital organs and sitting up straight enough to react, and Yasha is close enough to cover his throat and eyes if he were to be taken by surprise.

Not that he will. They’re surrounded by friends. It’s fine.

Gods, does he hate discussions like this. Make him paranoid.

So now everyone’s in Jester and Beau’s room. Looking at him. Nott and Caleb sit at the head of Beau’s bed with Fjord at the foot, and Beau leans against the door—no escape there. Just. Staring at each other. Waiting for an explanation to bubble up from someplace on its own.

Molly wants to say something, anything, just to break the silence, but his throat is tight and he can’t. It’s all he can do to breathe. He doesn’t want to talk about this. You aren’t supposed to just _say_ these things. He doesn’t want to talk about it. His throat is tense enough to _hurt_ and he can’t make the muscles relax. He needs to say something, break the tension somehow. He can’t talk. He can’t talk and all he can feel is the holes drilled in his soul where the words should be, and nothing is going to come out no matter how hard he tries because he’s _empty_ and everyone will be mad at him and he can’t speak and there is nothing he can do about it, ever, there’s never anything he can do about it—

Yasha’s knuckles come down solidly on his right horn. The shock of pain makes him look up a moment.

“I still don’t know what the fuck is happening,” she says reasonably.

That’s right. Yasha first, everyone else second. He has Jester and he can talk to Yasha. He can almost always talk to Yasha. One thing at a time.

Gods, he doesn’t even remember any of this shit. He shouldn’t be reduced to some mute, empty thing just talking about it to _Yasha_.

He opens his mouth still uncertain whether his voice will come to him or not, but by some miracle words start leaving his body.

“Horns. Not a lot of tieflings…put holes in them. Willingly.” He looks straight at Yasha and at no one else. No one else is even here, as far as he’s concerned. Just Molly and Yasha having a friendly conversation while Jester guards against the rest of the room and drapes her tail along his side.

He makes an effort to stop his own from lashing and twisting in visible discomfort.

Gods, he should be better at this by now. The scars, the complete blankness where his identity should be, the blood magic, all of these things he can redirect and smile through and it doesn’t matter, but these fucking holes in him—

Yasha nods. “Okay. Did you?”

Gods, it’s so simple when she says it. “No.”

He doesn’t remember any of it, but he knows it hurt _so much_. The scrape of something inside his bones had hollowed him out and horrified him, tensed every muscle into a painful arch that he could barely feel over the electricity coming from every nerve. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. All of the tiny unnoticeable movements of his beating heart and _whoever’s_ tools or hands had _scraped_ across his marrow and his soul in a sound and feeling he will never forget. All he can hear is the drag, vibrating through him from parts that _should not be vulnerable_ being drilled into, never to heal, never to scar.

His skin, his muscles, his blood; he gets those back with rest and healing. His horns are exposed bone and they will always be broken.

His mouth forms the shape of _empty_ without his permission, and he refuses.

These holes in him are not all he is. They are not what he is at all. He is what he’s done with them, and what he’s done with them is decorate.

Caleb’s diamond comes out and Nott flinches to her crossbow, but Yasha only smirks faintly when he jumps to his feet on Jester’s bed. He’s getting the sheets all dirty, but to be fair, they did come that way.

“Tiefling horns have feeling. You’re not really supposed to tell folks who aren’t, you know, tieflings; but they’re actually part of us, not like hair or claws, but maybe like your nose. Except they’re also made of bone on the outside and tough as hell to break through, so getting a neat hole in them is pretty damned painful.” He tosses his head to let his ornaments clink. He has nothing to be ashamed of. “I came with ‘em like this, so I can’t say why I’ve got ‘em. But folks who know tieflings from tieflings are gonna think it’s a slavery, tiefling trafficking, horrible torture thing. Faith, earlier, she prob’ly figured I wasn’t here willingly, and when Caleb understood Infernal she had her suspicions confirmed, more or less. Jester and I said he’s good people and she apologized. Happy now?”

He struts to the head of the bed at the corner wall, half covered by Yasha if he wants to duck down and with Jester one more step away. He’s taller than everyone from this vantage point. He doesn’t owe them shit. That’s all they need to know so it’s all they’re getting.

“And the people who did this to you—they still out there?” Fjord asks, finally, exchanging glances with the others. Yasha tilts her head the slightest bit at the question.

Molly shrugs expansively, gracefully; he steps and drops off the bed to sit at the edge of it. “Fuck if I know. It didn’t happen to me. I’d say if they haven’t found me yet, they’re probably not looking too hard. Chances are, whoever had this body before me killed them.”

He gets the impression that his predecessor could pack a serious punch. It comes with the blood cultist package, he imagines.

Caleb’s eyes pin him through and he stares him down. Humans are unnerved by his eyes, he knows. And Caleb hates eye contact at the best of times.

He has nothing to hide and this fucker has nothing on him. He has his sisters at each side and no one here can hurt him.

Caleb isn’t faltering, so Molly takes the next step. “Does this satisfy your curiosity, Mister Caleb? Are you happy with these answers?”

“Caleb didn’t—” Nott begins to defend as Jester tugs the back of his coat back.

“Perhaps we should not be fighting each other over this when we were literally just telling people that we are not fighting, technically. Technically,” she says. “Maybe we should be trying to get along and maybe we can fight something else later.”

“No, no, that is fair,” Caleb relents. “I apologize, Mollymauk, if I have made you feel…cornered. Obviously, you had expected some relative privacy in your native language, and I should not have been eavesdropping. If they will not affect the group, your scars are your own business. I am satisfied.”

Molly, who had stopped paying attention at _I apologize, Mollymauk_ , grins and bounces on the balls of his feet.

“Well, that settles that, then! And look, we didn’t even need to break out the alcohol!” He waves the bottle that did not disappear from his grasp and sees Nott guiltily hide the other half-bottle remaining behind her body.  A giddiness he can’t control shivers through him. “Time for drinking!”

Beau moves like she’s going to, but she doesn’t stop him from sashaying out the door and down the hall. He has to get out, he needs to get out of there.

No one follows as he goes downstairs to the bar. No one follows, so he doesn’t need to keep looking behind him. No one is watching him. No one is coming for him; tracking him down like a hunted thing to remove parts of him until he understands that destroying him would be nothing, would be the flick of a hand, so unworthy of time or attention that it has to be drawn out as painfully as possible just to justify the waste of potential in this arrogant gnat.

That’s awfully specific, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not relevant, because no one is following him. No one is finding him. He’s not even hiding.

So he tells himself as he walks confidently out of the inn and curls up as tight as possible in a dark alleyway where no one can find him.

He'll go back later, and he'll have a good time at the bar, and he'll live with it. For now, at least he has plenty of alcohol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhhhhhh surprise angst! whoops,,,
> 
> Thank you everyone for your kind comments! They mean a lot to me!


	5. Don't Expect Payment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of ways to owe someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning on this one for a near character death and some gore--I glossed over medical specifics, but there's guts here, my friends. Happy ending, but a bumpy road there.
> 
> I really hope I made Jester badass enough in this one. I want to give her agency in the story--it's not just Molly doing shit and her reacting, it's the two of them together creating their futures. Please let me know if you think I did okay with her characterization, it's really important to me!

_I love you_ is not a sentiment easy to express in Infernal.

The softest way to say it, non-romantically, literally translates to _I don’t expect payment_. It’s not something a lot of people appreciate.

But Jester knows better. It doesn’t just mean what it says on the tin— _I don’t expect payment_ means _I have given you my trust, my heart, my back. You could use me for all that I’m worth and ruin me. I would take the world for you if you asked me to. And for all this, I will not demand a return_. _I am yours truly, but you are your own_.

It’s an unselfish love, a free love, with no strings attached. It is a love that does not demand but offers, an acknowledgement that to trust someone is to provide them an opportunity to profit from you, if they wish.

If everyone that you trusted completely were worthy of that trust, there would be no word for ‘betrayal.’ Infernal has fifty-seven.

 _I don’t expect payment_ means that even if the person you love is one of those people that seems reliable and trustworthy and beloved right up until they’ve run out of use for you, even if they are only playing the games that devils play and you have been the sucker, you do not expect recompense for the easy mark you’ve made for them. They owe you nothing, because you chose to be weak for them, and if it is a mistake it is not one you regret.

Jester chooses trust a lot. She understands what it means not to expect payment.

She has never before not had payment expected from her.

It isn’t fair. It’s not fair that her first time hearing this _I love you_ in the language of her blood is when she is covered in blood, when she wants to return the safety she has been offered, when she wants to have her full life ahead of her to not expect payment and not have payment expected. She _wants_ so badly to give her time freely to her brother, and she _knows_ he wants to give her his time in return.

It isn’t fair, then, that he is bleeding out above her and she cannot reach him to stop him from dying.

The battle continues, she knows it does because there is something in her blood that cares about danger and powerful forces clashing, but for Jester it stops.

“Hey, Jester,” Mollymauk says, standing on top of the steep cliff face, the last of the spell snipers dead at his feet where she can’t see them.

The spray of blood was awful. Molly won’t be able to stay standing for long.

“Hey, Jester,” he says. She hadn’t seen the enemy aiming for her and he’d just saved her life, maybe. She owes him now. She owes him her life, and she should pay by spending the rest of it with him.

“Hey Jester,” says Molly, her battle-brother, in Infernal, “ _I don’t expect payment_.”

He says it. She has wanted siblings her whole life to love and be loved by, to fight with, to live with, and now he is saying that he wants that too but all he will do is die for her. He is dying for her and he does not expect her to pay him back for it.

Molly crumples, and standing beneath the cliff’s edge Jester cannot see him anymore.

“Molly?” she asks. “Molly? That is very nice but I need you to talk to me right now. Molly, are you awake?”

Nothing. Jester scrabbles at the sheer rock and can’t get a grip. They’d been ambushed on the assumption that Molly and Yasha and Beau would be unable to reach the snipers; how had he gotten up there? How can she get to him?

“ _Brother_?” she calls him, meaning _battle-brother_ , one who fights with her until the end. Someone she will never need to call to her aid, because she will not be in danger if he can help it. Someone she will protect with her life. “ _Brother_? Molly?”

He does not answer. A misfired curse strikes the rock next to her and fizzles—she snarls at the caster and ignores it. She needs to get up.

“ _Brother_?” she calls, using a softer sort of word—someone who lets his guard down to smile around her, someone she trusts enough to be gentle with. She means Molly as he teaches her songs from other lands by the fire at night, or as he appears when she’s frustrated and angry and refuses to leave until she has smiled. She calls for her brother, the purveyor of fine hugs.

She can’t find a way up. There is no path. She bloodies her hand gripping at a crack in the sheer wall of stone—should she blast it? Will Molly fall, if she does?

 _Traveler help me_ , she prays, and calls again.

“ _Brother_?” Someone who is family because the system of debts, who owes and is owed, part of a group that has become so entangled that the individuals involved cannot be separated. The only good excuse, in Infernal, to do someone a favor for free—you probably owe them, or they’ll pay you back on the same assumption later. Someone who won’t die before you because they owe you the rest of their life; someone you will not die on because you need more time to settle your debts.

“ _Damn you to the Abyss if you will not listen to me_ , Molly! Get up! I need you to get up so I can heal you so you need to get up!” Jester catches something and tears her claw something awful, but she’s finally scrabbling up the sheer cliff face. She cannot see her path forward, but she won’t let that stop her.

The sizzle of spells has died down to intermittent sniping and the clash of blades faded to the wet sound of flesh being cut, but Jester knows her group has won. She is a sitting duck on the side of the cliff; if any enemies remained unengaged, she would be dead already. Fjord will watch her back and she will get to Molly.

Jester calls him brother, and Molly, and one-who-has-pledged-his-life-to-me, calls him an unaffiliated individual that is under her protection because he can’t pay her what he owes her if he’s dead, and he does not respond. If he’s bleeding out up there, he could be dead by now.

She puts her weight in a fissure and it crumbles beneath her. She catches herself and moves on. She needs to get up there.

“Jester? What’re you…?” Fjord’s voice isn’t far away—she’s been scrabbling as best she can and she’s barely fifteen feet above him.

“Molly is up here! I need to get to Molly!” she lunges for a handhold just out of her reach and barely catches it. Fine. This is fine. She hangs from it for an instant and swings up—five more feet. She can see the edge of a blade over the cliff.

“Why can’t Molly get down to us?” Nott asks, a little farther away. Jester will feel really super bad about it later, but for now, she’s ignoring her. She’s getting up there and she’s helping Molly because no one has ever loved her for free and she’s not letting him get hurt. Not for her.

It’s not _fair_. It’s not fair if he has to pay instead. There has to be a way to have people that you care for and neither of you has to owe anyone for it. Jester hasn’t been waiting her whole life for nothing.

The Traveler told her that some day she wouldn’t be lonely anymore. He’ll help her help Molly. It’s going to be okay.

She grips the slick grass at the top of the cliff and it rips, but she digs her claws into the dirt and leans and there’s a precarious moment, balanced over the edge with her toes crammed on a narrow foothold and deep claw marks in the bloodstained earth, teetering, and she refuses to fall because it’s not just her life on the line—but the moment passes, and she tumbles forward over the pooling blood, and she doesn’t bother getting to her feet before crawling to Molly’s side.

He is breathing, shallowly, fallen curled on his side with his hands still curled around his swords, which still shine bright. His eyes flutter as she approaches before sliding out of focus and closing again.

His clothes are unharmed except where blood soils them, but his skin beneath them is torn open and Jester sees bare muscle, tendons, fat and bone. Inflict wounds can be a nasty spell, especially overpowered like that.

“ _Wake up_ ,” she instructs him firmly. If he remains unconscious, she may not be able to help him. Her spells are kaput.

He doesn’t respond. His breaths are slow and so shuddering that they appear to stop. Each millisecond pause stops Jester’s heart, too.

“ _You owe me, you know_ ,” she says. “ _I have healed you many times and I have been healed by you none. So you should get on that, before you get yourself killed. You cannot flee your debts_.”

So they say, anyway—it’s something her mother told her many times growing up.

Molly continues to breathe haltingly. She casts spare the dying, but she can feel the magic glancing off of him. Either he is no longer dying or he is about to be no longer dying in the other way. Blood continues to flow out of him. There is a lot of it.

“ _Oathbreaker_ ,” she calls him, in desperation. “ _You called me sister and you abandon me. You leave me alone in a field of enemies to die while you rest. Debt-runner, oathbreaker, one-against-whom-I-will-avenge-myself, coward, first-to-break, don’t die! You can’t die yet_!”

She tries to cast cure wounds as powerfully as she can and her magic will barely stir to her. She needs rest but she needs Molly to wake up more.

The pause between one breath and the next is longer for a moment, and for another. It’s unbearable.

Jester can barely hear herself talk over the roar of terror and fury dizzying her. She calls him _dear one_ , calls him _foolish adrenaline junkie_ , _ridiculous peacock_ , _soft fool_ , calls him _brother_ and _brother_ and _brother_. She calls him and he doesn’t answer.

Finally, in desperation.

“ _I expect payment_!” she demands. “ _I am an easy mark and you have hurt me and I expect payment_ , Mollymauk! _Get back here and settle the debt or be damned_!”

It doesn’t work like that. Tieflings can’t damn people, not like a devil could. But she is furious—that crushing feeling in her chest has to be fury, because it can’t be grief—and he is slipping through her fingers and his lifeblood, thick and black, is sticky all over her and she will not allow him to die. She will not.

His chest settles and stills, slumping into itself with a sucking sound where her hands are too small to stop all the wounds. Blood no longer spurts, but pumps sluggishly with his stuttering heart. Even that seems to settle for a moment.

“ _Pay me back, damn you_ ,” she spits out. His warm blood covers her clawtip to elbow.

He heaves in another breath.

He breathes in another breath.

His skin is torn ragged and his smallest movements make horrible noises, but he breathes. He breathes. The moment passes and he continues to breathe.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Jester says, to the Traveler, to Molly, to whatever distant ancestor gifted her this language to share with him. “ _Thank you. Thank you_.”

She carefully balls bandages and stops dark lifeblood. The crimson all over the ground and coming from minor wounds can wait. She takes his swords from his hands and they stop glowing—she hurls them over the cliff, too. He will heal before he touches those things again.

She pulls him into something resembling one piece, carefully. “ _I expect_ pastries _every day for a very long time. You owe me a lot for patching you up like this. I think that’s at least a decade_.”

There’s no Infernal word for pastries. It’s the greatest failing of their language.

“ _Once it’s been a decade, you still owe me for making me climb all the way up that cliff. I could have died! And I’m kind of saving your life right now, technically_ ,” she tells him. “ _I think it’s only fair that we get a couple more decades for that. In fact, I am feeling generous. What if you spend the rest of my life alive and do not ever try to die on me again and we will call it a deal, yes? We will be even_.”

He isn’t awake to argue. “ _If you do not agree to my terms, speak now or forever hold your peace_.”

His eyes flutter. She is still wrist-deep in fixing him up, but she does not tell him to sleep. She says instead, “ _You have done a very stupid thing_.”

Molly manages a tired grin. His chest burbles as he hisses, “ _Probably_.”

“ _I will forgive you if you promise never to do it again_.”

He tries to hum and it turns into a weak cough. “ _Probably not_.”

Molly is a very stupid man sometimes. His eyes flutter and he squints as he tries to remain conscious. “ _Y’okay_?”

He shouldn’t be speaking. He needs his energy. He has to be in a lot of pain right now. Jester wants him to keep awake so she can talk to him and know for sure that he is alive, but the hiss in his chest speaks more than he ever would to how awful he feels.

“ _I survive another battle and our foes fall before us_ ,” she tells him in the traditional rhyme.

“ _Then I—then I_ —” he starts to respond, but she puts a hand over his mouth. He doesn’t have the breath to finish out the phrase—he’ll only hurt himself trying.

“ _Sleep_ , _brother_ ,” she says. One of his hands clutches her wrist with all the strength of a butterfly. “ _Rest and recover_.”

“ _You need—me awake. Said so_ ,” he wheezes. She’s beginning to worry that he’ll tip himself back over that delicate border from stable to dead. She brushes his hand off and he makes a protesting croak.

“ _I lied-so-you’d-do-what-I-want_ ,” she says. “ _It’s okay, Molly. Go to sleep. I will be here when you wake_.”

He keeps looking at her with fluttering eyes, getting dimmer by the second but stubbornly remaining open. He tries to say something past the air whistling through his throat.

“ _I don’t expect payment_ ,” she tells him, finally.

He relaxes.

“ _I don’t…expect payment_ ,” he returns. “ _The rest of my life, freely given_.”

“ _The rest also of mine, freely given_ ,” she promises. “ _Sleep_.”

After all, they have plenty of time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jester rolled super fucking well on her medicine checks and so very badly on perception to look for the way up. Luckily, Molly juuuust barely made his death saves with 2 fails and 3 bare successes. One was an 11.
> 
> I was thinking of doing one more kind of happy fluffy one where the tiefling terrors start teaching Caleb (and maybe the whole team) Infernal. Starting, of course, with the most important phrases. I'm not sure whether I'll end up writing that or not, though, so as of right now this work is complete. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Please, if you can, drop a comment!


	6. Son of a Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb wants to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you thought this fic was finished......april fool's it's not!!
> 
> Actually though, I had a wonderful surge of feedback that really revitalized me to write. So here's another chapter! I have part 2 to this one in mind, and maybe a Yasha chapter after that, but idk if I will ever get around to those. One extra chapter may be enough.

Jester, bless her loving heart, is going to drive him absolutely _insane_.

It’s not that Molly doesn’t know how close he was to dying! Absolutely, yeah, he did something stupid and almost died afterwards. He’d thought he was dead. He’d gone into the light. End of story, take your bows, curtain call.

And then he’d faded back into some kind of awareness with his guts all over Jester’s hands, and that’s just, that’s just weird. It’s strange to see your blood, which is yours and supposed to be a part of you, just sort of out there! Sure, when _he_ cuts himself it’s just what he does and that’s fine, but when someone else decides to open up his torso and get it all over, it’s weird! Seeing your organs is _weird_!

So, yeah, he gets that there’s some recovering to do. When he’d first risen from the grave, it had taken him days to be able to move faster than a crawling limp, and he should be happy that he’s not that badly off this time. Bed rest is the least of his worries, and if it makes Jester happy, he’s more than willing to lounge around for a while.

But dear Moonweaver, it is _boring_.

He fails once again to shuffle his cards with any sort of grace. Half of them slide out of his hands. This is great.

Caleb glances up from his book, sees nothing wrong, and looks back down again. He, frustratingly, doesn’t seen bored at all by having to take _three days_ to do _nothing_. Which is probably why he’s the one sitting back with Molly, come to think of it—Molly would be able to con the others into letting him do _something_ fun. At least he’d be able to drive Beau to try to murder him, and that would be exciting.

Yasha would probably sit on him until he went to sleep like he’s supposed to. He misses her already.

The cards all fall again. His hands are shaking; he should probably rest them. But that means being even _more_ bored.

“Would you like to borrow my book?”

Molly looks up from the pile of scattered cards—the hierophant reversed; the wheel of fortune is sideways, half-hidden behind a reversed temperance; judgement; the tower; and as always, the high priestess, reversed—and Caleb is looking back at him.

“If you drop those cards again I will be forced, unfortunately, to light them on fire. Would you like to borrow my book instead, so that you will have something to do that is not flipping shit out of the corner of my eye,” Caleb proposes again.

“Well then,” Molly says. Maybe Caleb isn’t as unaffected as he’d thought. “…I can’t read.”

“You can’t _read_?” Oh, he can hear Caleb’s worldview shattering. Oh, dear. Nott is going to kill him.

Caleb looks at Molly like he’s stomping puppies, and then back at his book like it’s the stomped puppies. And then at Molly.

“Wait, but I have seen you read things before. Street signs. You found the sign for the inn,” Caleb says, after a moment.

Molly shrugs. “Well, I can and I can’t. It’s not hard to look for the big sign hanging over the door.”

“No, you read it out loud. I heard you. You are ‘pulling my leg.’” Molly can hear the air quotes.

He shifts uncomfortably, but then his entire body reminds him that he is on bedrest and shifting uncomfortably will have to wait a few days. This is deeply unfair.

Still, Caleb’s given him the perfect out. He doesn’t really want to have the “can you read or can’t you, choose only one” conversation right now, especially if Caleb has already decided he’s joking.

Molly goes with it, tail waving affably. At least that doesn’t hurt. “Yeah, sure did get you going there. That was a good one.”

Caleb’s eyes narrow like he’s sure Molly is up to _something_ , but can’t quite figure out what. Molly blinks innocently.

“…All the same, would you like to find something that you will do, so that we do not drive each other crazy in the same room all day?” Caleb asks eventually, evidently deciding that calling him on his shit isn’t worth the effort. Molly loves when people do that.

“You wanna get your fortune read?” Molly asks. He doesn’t give himself good odds for stacking the deck right now, but an honest read on Caleb might be fun.

“No, thank you,” Caleb says. There goes that idea.

“You wanna not tell Jester I was out of bed and go down to the bar?” Molly tries. His chances of getting there without help are next to nil, but at least there are _people_ there. Molly needs people to live.

“I do not think that would be worth my head,” Caleb says. “And when you collapse and fall down the stairs, I would not be able to bring you back up to the room.”

“Damn,” Molly says. His tail flips back and forth over the bed and he frowns at it.

Caleb does put in a bookmark and sit back, so at least he’s going to be suffering with Molly.

“Actually, there was one thing that I have been meaning to ask you,” Caleb says.

Molly perks up. That tone of voice means business. At least damage to his (lack of) deep psyche will be entertaining. He’ll take anything, at this point.

“Take a shot,” he says.

Caleb furrows his brow briefly, but whatever’s puzzling him, he dismisses it. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. He speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully.

“When we recovered you, Jester…ah, that is no good.” He stops for a moment. “When we were visiting…hm.”

Molly’s eyebrow raises without conscious thought. Sounds like something Caleb’s been thinking over for a while.

Caleb laces his hands together and clears his throat. “Do you know much about the spell _comprehend languages?”_

Molly knows precisely two languages, and he was born with both of them. He’s not going to rule out wandering across another one that he’ll wake up knowing at some point, but he’s never used magic to learn any of them.

“Ah, that was not the start I wanted. That is, I am not familiar with…I do not speak…”

Caleb’s ever-present worry lines deepen, and he rubs the pads of his fingers together in thought.

“I can just start guessing,” Molly offers. Before he’d gotten his words back, playing warmer-and-cooler with people who could talk had been his best way of getting anything across. It might be fun to try that from the other end.

“No, ach, I am not asking this right, I will just ask. What are the things you say in Infernal?” Caleb’s piercing eyes hit Molly’s own gaze for a moment and Caleb sets his shoulders and asks. Molly would probably be some kind of happy about Caleb’s growing confidence, or how he’s asking for what he wants and all, but.

Hm.

“You…don’t know Infernal,” Molly says flatly.

That kind of changes things, a bit. And now Molly has to decide how much.

But Caleb had known Infernal, or understood it, in that town with Faith’s apothecary—but no, he’d asked about the _comprehend languages_ spell, _obviously_ he knows it, he’s a _wizard_ , Mollymauk! And now Molly’s time to finish that response without missing a beat is growing short, so _think of something_ …

“Not surprising, then, that you came to me to teach it to you, hm? As I am uniquely qualified,” he purrs. What. What the fuck. Why is he like this. Caleb doesn’t _know Infernal_ , which means _no one taught him Infernal_ , which means Molly’s been treating him like some kind of cousin-of-tongues for literally _no reason_ , and now he has committed to flirting his way out of this situation, with the member of his group who is second-least able to handle aggressive flirtation, and actually, Molly has made a lot of terrible decisions in his life, but this one is up there! This whole situation is up there in the awkward and bad zone!

“Yes. Jester is very enthusiastic, but she tends to devolve into drawing dirty things in my spellbook. You are also easily distracted, but being bedridden, may be easier to keep on topic,” Caleb says.

“Right,” Molly says. “I’m a great teacher.”

At least the flirting was something he knows how to do.

Caleb pulls out a piece of parchment. He has materials ready. He’s going to take notes.

Molly has so many things to teach Caleb, but somehow, Infernal never made his curriculum.

Does he just…sweep past this? That’s a lot easier to do when you can physically leave. Or move much, at all. Apparently he’s not going to get out of it with a wink and a subtle flirt, either, and also he’s really trying hard not to flirt with Caleb because Caleb is half a step up from feral and not equipped to understand friendly flirting. Goodness knows Molly hadn’t been ready for complex socialization when he’d been at that stage.

But that leaves actually teaching Caleb Infernal, which is…

Well, there’s not _really_ a reason not to, but also, there’s every reason not to.

If Caleb can speak Infernal—and he’s smart enough that he’ll pick it up given the least instruction, Molly is certain—then he’ll be able to speak Infernal _to people_ , which will get him branded with some unsavory words in respectable company. Not to mention places where they’ll let him in the door if he speaks their language, thinking he’s good people. And sure, Caleb has a good man in him, but he’s buried deep, deep down. And possibly suffocating.

Does Molly think Caleb is right to be a cousin-of-tongues? Is he even the right person to make that decision? He’s only been alive for two years.

Then again. It doesn’t really change anything to teach Caleb Infernal, does it? Molly had thought Caleb spoke Infernal already, and that had been just fine. After a bit of embarrassment about being quite as open as he and Jester had been prior, that is. There isn’t anything _wrong_ about Caleb knowing the language.

So why does Molly feel so defensive about it?

He wishes Jester were here. He’s not sure if this is one of those things that’s a tiefling thing or one of those things that’s a Lucien thing. If it’s a Lucien thing, he should teach Caleb Infernal immediately. Fuck that guy.

“Mollymauk? Is everything all right?” Caleb asks. He looks a bit puzzled, like Molly’s maybe traded their cart wheel for a handcart and he’s not sure where this is going.

“…yeah,” Molly says. “Why do you want to learn?”

It’s a stalling question, and a pretty poor one at that. But Caleb takes it with good enough grace, flipping his pen back in his hand and sitting up some.

“It would be to my advantage to know anything you can teach me,” Caleb says. “Besides this, we have been in situations before that have involved Infernal being spoken. Especially if you or Jester were to be inaccessible, I would like to be able to provide some context for the group. I enjoy learning, where it is accessible.”

Molly frowns slightly. Those are…fine reasons. If this were any other language, save maybe Undercommon or Druidic or Halfling, that would be enough reason to learn. But a human speaking Infernal is going to look like an ally, and Molly isn’t sure whether Caleb is one. To Molly, he may be, but to tieflings? To others, who learn the language because they’re all lumped together anyway, so they might as well have something to share—it’s their concern, too. Drow and orcs and others who the finer races are never going to love.

Is Caleb one of those people? Can he be trusted with them? Mollymauk has the chance to decide, right now.

Who does Mollymauk want to be? Does he want to keep people safe, or does he want to trust them?

“Ah, there is another reason.” Caleb hesitates. He leans forward, doesn’t meet Molly’s eye. “That is, when you went down…Jester was very upset.”

She’d certainly been mad enough when he’d woken up. Molly nods.

“She was speaking in Infernal, but none of us could understand what she was saying. But she was clearly in distress,” Caleb continues. “I would have liked to be able to understand. I would have wanted to be able to help her.”

Oh, but he’s good. Question is, how much of that is exactly what Molly wants to hear, and how much of it is true?

Well, does it matter? Caleb is his friend. Maybe whoever came before Molly was better at being suspicious, keeping their guard up and never handing out trust for free. But Molly wasn’t raised by tieflings. Molly is circus folk, and the people he travels with are his family. If he teaches Caleb Infernal, maybe Caleb really will just use it to understand.

“Sure,” Molly says. “You know what? You’ve convinced me. We’re starting you off with the important bits first, though. Do you know what _whinging spawn of a spined devil and a rock troll_ means?”

Jester is going to think this is hilarious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do want to dedicate this chapter to [mistysteps](https://mistysteps.tumblr.com/), who recced this fic on tumblr [here](http://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/181051885037/dathen-mistysteps-okay-since-ive-seen-a). Also to [sameshork](https://sameshork.tumblr.com/), who drew [FANART!!!](https://sameshork.tumblr.com/post/181097840976/hello-your-description-says-requests-are-open-so) (& acindra for requesting it). I'm so pleased with it <3 <3 <3 I've never loved anything in my life like I love this. Thank you so much you guys! And a big thanks to [Mikkeneko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko) (whose fics are themselves fantastic, I love LOST & FOUND and TIME both) for letting me know. Thanks, everyone!!!
> 
> As a last note, I have a larger critrole project in the works. I'm not 100% on publishing it or not yet, but it would be a semiau exploring another direction after Molly's death, and going into his backstory. Please let me know what you thought of this fic, and if you'd be interested in that! It takes a lot of my time writing these, but being able to talk to other fans really makes it worth the work!


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